Evening Star Newspaper, March 4, 1928, Page 53

e Devil's Mantle A MYSTE By FRANK Covvricht by Frank L. Packard w7, (Continued from Yesterday's Star.) CHAPTER VL The Mutiny. HERE had been bad weather— days of it—10 days of it. At sunset of the day Peter had come aboard the Break O'Daw had run into a northerly blo and from that into a succession o gales each more violent, it had scemed, than the onc before—and the Break O'Dawn had made but & poor fight of it. She was very old, even fore Capt. Josephus Mumm had picked her up for the proverbial song in Batavia— and that was 10 years ago. She floun- dered now, little better than a hulk, | crippled, an unlovely mass of wreck- age, in a sea that swept her again and again fore and aft, and to which she rose in a sodden, helpless way. ing her pain in every bulkhead chion. .nAdnds“s? was a night of utter black- ness, save when now and then a light- ning flash cut a jagged, ugly streak through the inky sKky. Peter, sea- swept, drenched, wind-lashed, stood at the schooner's rail, idle, save for the effort to maintain his position. It was more comfortable here, miserable though it was. than in the stuffy little cabin below. He smiled suddenly. mockingly to himself. Of all on board he alone had benefited by the voyage. The sea air and white man's food, coarse and badly prepared as that food had been. had brought him through a period of convalescence to almost per- fect health again. And vet it had been 10 days of hell. Prom where he stood. Peter could make out one shape, and only one. upon the deck—a figure at the wheel —litle more than a blotch in the dark- ness, discernible only because of the faint glimmer from the binnacle lamps. But that did not mean that the Break O'Dawn was steering a “course.” For days on end there had not been a glin of the sun, and no one on board knew her position, though Capt. Josephus Mumm “guessed she was somewhere off the top-end of the Aus- tralian coast.” With what was left to her of spars, and rigging. and rags of sail, she was hoveto, fighting now literally at her last gasp. A sudden lurch tore Peter from his hold: a stinging sheet of spune lashed him from head to foot. He recovered himself, and swept the water irom his face. And then a strange, hoarse laugh. defiant, a challenge flung to the cle- ments, to his fellow men, and almost to his God, burst from his lips. He was not only accused of the murder of Tom Murchison—that was not enough—he was accused of this! His free hand with knotted fist swept out around him —he was accused even of the iil-fortuae that had come upon this scuttling hulk which in a few hours would probably be where she should have been 2 wozen years ago—rotting whatever there was left of her still unrotted at the dottom of the sea! It was the crew, of course. They were an ugly and unlovely lot—what ‘was left of them All natives. Mostly Lascars. VYar Lal. the mate, was & native of Bombay. But they suitca Capt. Josephus Mumm. who was a trader of fortune, an itinerant wan- t | wouldn't! RY STORY. f L. here, with the howl of the wind and the rush of the sea. The other thing was the worst—Peter Blake murdered Tom Murchison. That would last— endure. Good old head, after all, Sir Martin Hadley—old school, of course, but a decent chap. He could see Sir Martin’s stunned, white face. A lot of beastly gossip, too, in the clubs. Rough on the old pater's friends. then she'd know—no, thank God, she She dida't know he was ! Peter Blake. Strange, he should be | so sure she had not long ago forgotten 'a face that she had séen but once in {all her life, and then for an instant. |But he was sure. She had not for- |gotten: she would never forget—not {that it had at all necessarily remained | with her as some great, vital moment | | in her life as it had with him; it might | perhaps have left with her no more ;tmpre&fium than that of a lingering wonder, but it was impossible that she could forget. He knew that—as some- times one knows the truth of things in jone’s_inmest soul. He knew that, so {long as she lived, if only at odd, unex- pocted moments, with long intervals be- | tween, and longer as the years went by, /no doubt, and perhaps at the end as | no more than a vague, unreal memory, { that meeting in the lobby of the theater | in London. two years ago now, would | still remain’ with her. | Strange! Very strange! He had And | B THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTO He leaned across the table, and thumped both flsts upon it: The matter of Yar Lal and the knife appeared for the moment to have pass- ed entirely from his mind. she'll scuttle?” he roared again. have no talk like that aboard! I'll fight her through yet, d'you understand? She ain't going to scuttic, Capt. Mumm stared. His eyes nar-|ed Capt. Mumm. ro in & puzsled way. hat d' mean?” he t was flung at a few moments ago,” said Peter. “Fair- ly well aimed, too, dis- tance. It grazed my cheek, and landed with its buried about half an inch in the deck.” He smiled faintly. doubt the intention, but perhaps | would have been a kindly act after all | —I dare say it would have been easier to have gone out like that, than to scuttle with the Break O'Dawn a few hours from now.” “What's that you say? Scuttle?” roa hear! you hear me?” Peter shrugged his red-haired man. was wholly pure grit. Showing Every New and Important Fashion of the Season! Y . been very sure too, always sure, as | though it were incvitable, that, at the | | turning of some corner, as it were, he | and she would meet ag: He had | been sure of this up till now, so sure | of it that, since his “arrest” it had | been a source of horror to him. He| had dreaded it more than anything | else connected with the miserable ac- cusation against him, more than any | penalty that, failing to prove his inno- | cence, might be meted out to him. Again and again he had pictured the scene, dreamed it in his dreams—Iest | night’ he had started up out of his | sleep with the vividness of it bringing the sweat beads out in great drops upon his forchead. Where else under the circumstances could they meet? He was standing in the dock arraigned on a charge of murder—and she was sit- ting there a spectator in the courtroom. | It was absurd, fantastical! Why should she be in a courtroom, anyway? And. besides. the width of the world lay be- tween them. Nevertheless the thought, a product of his own unwarranted imagination though it might be. had persisted and had become a wretched | obsession with him. Well, that was all | at an cnd tonight. There wouldn't be | cny courtroom: there wouldn't be any arraignment of Peter Blake for the murder of Tom Murchison—except as it lived, an unanswered, untried charge in the minds of men until some newer sensation took its place and it faded away into the limbo of oblivion. He gave the Break O'Dawn. and Yar Lal with his ugly lot, and Capt. Josephus Mumm with ais gargoyle face, and him- self, Peter Blake, with his memories and his unsavory notoriety, a matter of hours—no more than that at most, and A startled, half-smothered cry came suddenly from his lips, and instinctiveiy Peter flung himself back against the schooner’s rail. It had come out of the night, out of the darkness without was something likeable about the little He wondered if the other had even a meager hope, or If it derer, picking at best a scanty living | Warning—come and gone with incredi- from wl;uke\-gr came his way, for they ble swiftness. Something had touched were cheaply noused. cheaply fed, and his cheek—like a bat brushing its wing magnificently indiffercnt 1o the hap- across his face. Imagination? A wisp of hazard movements of the Break spray erreant from its fellows? Peter ODawn. They were vengeful by na- brushed his hand across his face. It ture, stecped in the grossest ignorance, was wet. Naturally, it was wet! A fapatical in their superstitions. and flash of lightning' made momentary they blamed him, Peter. now for their daylight. Peter was staring at his hand. resent misfortunes. He was not sure There was something red on it. His ut that Capt. Mumm, who, like every saflor, did not himself lack superstition, was beginning to side with -them: He, ' giance~fell-on. a long-bladed knife al Feler Blake, was a murderer—unc'saL, He, therefore, must be the cause of (he il-Juck that. from the moment he hed come 2aboard, had heaped itself day efter day both upcn the crew and the Break O'Dawn herself. One disester after another-—an un- ending succession of them! Peter': face hardened. Oh. yes—that was quite true. So true that. tonight. little lcss thas a miracle would avzil them any- h His mind harked back in retrospect. He had come zboard, of course, a very sick man, scarcely able to wa.z, and there had been no thought of confining him 2s 2 priscner; then, little by little, be had got about, anc had even begun 1o take a small part in the work aboard the schooner. He had messed and lived with Capt. Josephus Mumm in the little cabin. Capt. Mumm had been neither . friendly nor unfriendly. Once, and once only. he, Peter, had attempted to discuss his own case with the other. Capt. Josephus Mumm had dismissed the matter peremptorily. “That's ali right. my lad.” he had grunted with finality. “Maybe you murdered Tom Murchison and maybe you didn’t. It am’t for me w say. That ain’t my hunt. The point is that you're Peter Blake, and there’s 5.000 pounds for the man that hands you over to the police —and Capt. Josephus Mumm is the man that's going to do it if hell freezes over. And that's that!” Prom the first the weather had grown worte and worse; and as though a piti- less, immutable fate was at work, one cisaster had followed another, until, through constant repetition, fear and panic stalked aboard the ill-fated schooner. On the third day after siand, the Break O'Dawn’s wop-hamper vent ; the next day one of the crew folioved the wp-hamper; 24 hours later one of the two boa's was stove in; the fo nmast went, kil ! y aga'n ‘They blemed him for this! At first, spart from eyeing him with curiosity, tney had bern indifferent 1 h ence, then y had begun W vullen & on, which had later broken out inw muttered disconent; and then, fanned into flame by Yar Lal, the mate the situstion had chimaxed that afiers ngon with open threaws, und a refus Gesperate as their necd of added man- power had been at the moment, 10 pull & rope with him—for that eficr- noon, Durgs. the man who had ac- companied Capt. Mumm and Yer Lal into the but where he, Peter, had been found. had been siruck dovn cme falling tackle, and now lay sonewhere up 10 a there in the o'l with what-uas probebly a fractured ARG that. U 5 the result ne ' the mark! 7 honight id of 1L for im s i that i hat did i s} malter? A TOALen mess vy & benstly o Tom 4 He had murcered Jom b rad clenched firoely tered! s wy bz e Jat Erpped wnseisly ut ns enother ugly sea curle #Bd el the Geck deep avi Bregk OQ'loawy' Whe g What & fuud of iron ikely v see wny bres row! Bhe heo Div wAS Ifting now v, with some- his hola shuurd The ¥ st ? b wasn't of duws Vamor- that last sew, SuOter, I ow pins- 43 Wbe way - like some human IL of wrecksge sl worn oul al after u long &nd bW striggle, wa spping Int Uiat final stage of comm Just precealng Giesolution 0, yer. Uiey'd probably cutee him us they dica’ 11 ever he had resd hate 30 Ake eyes of mien, he bad read 1o the eyes of Yir Lal and thow of L others vho were i of U crew five onunting Yar with the cmasind seven' Mir lsugh veng short end mirthless once more Well, he woulant Ale wits By 60050 PBEE G Uis! bcore! hepd five out of Thely curees ended bere, or would end sol) Vieuler difference did it, make whether | Ll wna Uikt poor aevi) cyes lifted, and before the flash was swallowed up in the darkness again, his -iew feet beyand him, its point embedded | in the deck, #s haft still quivering like | a tuning-fork. Peter's face was set in hard, chiseled lines. So it had come to this, had it? He stramned his eyes forward. He could sce nothing but the figure faintly out- lined by tne binnacle lamps. 1t was impossible from their relative positions, | taking into account the location of the | knife where it had struck the deck, that | the man at the wheel could have thrown | ii. So, though he was nowhere to be | seen in the darkness, it must have been ! Yar Lal, the mate! There was nobody else on deck. The mate had the watch —if 1t could be called a watch. Capt. Mumm was below drunk with sieep and exhaustion—so, oo, probably, were thc two others who remained of the crew. no;dcounun: the man with tihe broken ! Peter groped for & moment in the darkness, and fcund the knife. Then, watching his chance against the sca: and the schooner’s jurch, he gained the | companionway and descended the short | ladderlike steps to the cabin. The place was stuffy, hot, unwhole some. It was a miserable hole at best. | too small at any time for even a modi- cum of comfort. An oil lamp, suspend- ed from the ceiling, swung like a dis- tracted pendulum over the squat, bare | isble, and at times in the :fia]rncr ot | its motion smoked a little. Stretched out on a locker, that likevise did duty |for table seats, lay Capt. Josephus Mumm asleep. The man hadn't a dry | rag on him. and in the confined, un- | ventilated space he steamed. Peter's face lost some ‘of its own grimness as | he stared at the other., The man had | flung himself down there obviously in- different and too worn out to care about the greater ease his bunk in the so-call- | cd «tateroom. just off the forward end | of the cabin, might have afforded him, | nd his face now, even In repose, war #zgard and pinched. and, with hi | mouth wide open and the red hair, | tangled and matted, straggling over his | forehead, he. was an ungracious sight— out Peter, though he had no reason to | love the other, was conscious now of a (sudden sense of mingled pitv and ad- !miration. He did not know how many | hours on end In the last 10 days the | man had gone without sleep and done the work of two men besides, hut very many of them, with very short intervals inf rest in between. Capt. Josephus | Mumm had made a fine fight of it | There was nothing uncouth about the grit und courage the man had dis- | played Peter toyed with the knife in his hand What was the use, after all? | Better iet the man sleep! What par- | it was now or an hour from now that | the other was told about the liitle affalr | that had Just happened on deck—or ever. for ‘that matter! ‘The Break | O'Dawn would go down before the night | wis out--and that would end every- | thing effectually enough! And then Peter sturted suddenly. The shrewd | Bitthe eves of 1he man on the locke were wide open. staring st him Ot of whnt hrd spoarently been profound stamber. wnd whether or not due to s Lt trnined to wlertness. Capt. Josephus Mumm had become suddenly and in- | tensely nwske Hu. you swine!” ejmeulsted Capt Jorubus Mumm, Jerking himself up | Swify o e elbow, his eyes riveted on | the knife in Peter's hand ught yon | st In tme. did 17 Going o play | [ vour “Tom Murchison tricks on me. were your” He sprang to his feet, his | fuce dn fury. “Well. 'l show you \ Peter put the tuble between them There was something grimly fronics) in the unexpected turn of events-—and Cont. Jusephs Mumm 11 # pession was Guite capsble of anything!” You heven't gol sny pesrls, have you?" " Beter dngiired, coolly. “Why Should | want 1o murder yons” “Whatre you dolng with hat knife tien. end vhere'd you get 117" vetorted Capt Mumm fiercely 106 merely “Exhihit answered Peler, quietly He tossed the knite on the 16ble. “I'm not positive but I have n very good idea i1 helongs 1 that sweet-dlepositioned devil of ate of yours, Yar Lal” A’ In the ea “Beau Claire”—the new reliable guide to style—is the name adopted by a huge, buy- ing syndicate of which Brooks is a member. This powerful organization, by co-operative buying, is en- abled to have first choice of the authentic New Styles in Dresscs. Suits, Ensembles and Coats! It is a mark of distinction to be the wearer of a “Bean Claire’ garment The Suits—$16 Suits for Spring are exceedingly smart! The jackets, cither double or single breasted, are slightly fitted, many have bandings of braid. The wrap-around, or straight skirt is fll"liflncd in the ynuth‘u] and modern manner You will be charmed by the terials and the unusually fine tailoring. T he Ensembles—$25 to The three-picce Ensemble plays the most important role in the Spring mode. Qur variety includes eve A collection notable for distinctivencss of fabrics, and excellence of tailoring. A host of impressive models amphasizing the newest fashion points in style, material and color. “Where the Better Things Cost Less” M- CU@KS & CO G ~STREET BETWEEN 11th & 12 th 2 3 MARCH 4, 1928—PART “I'm not seaman enough to answer you,” he sald. y “Well, I'm seaman enough to tell you!" snapped Capt. Mumm. “The only thing that's going doy God, 1s the sea—not the Break O'Dawn! By tomor- row the tail end of il have passcd.” Peter made no answer. 4 Capt. Mumm sniffed angrily. “Now, what about that knife? say Yar Lal heaved it at you?” “or of the others,” amended m not prepared to say which.” “Humph!” exclaimed Capt. Mumm, roughly. “Well, you know why! And I ain't altogether sure I don't side with ‘em. Of all the scrougy luck that ever I've had since I went to sea, I've had the worst since you came aboard here. They've made ur their minds that you, being taboo with the blood of a man on your hands, are at the bottom of it, and, | Peter, damme, I ain't prepared to say but it |lips, straightened up tensely. begins to look uncommonly like it.” A figure, a strangely e figure, “I assure you,¥ sald Peter shortly, | was descending the companionway to that' I did not come aboard throus h’!h!' cabin. Yar Lal! The man had on Capt. Josephus Mumm scowled flercely. “You keep & civil tongue in your l, blast you!” he snarled. “You ought to have a knife heaved at you an any ac- count, a dozen of 'em, and I— Capt. Josephus Mumm paused sud- denly. a hard smile '.lrhwnl.n; his body; & mass of dripping over a lean, brown, working b out of it, as though out from behind some treacherous ambuscadd, glittered a pair of black eyes as venom- ous as a serpent’s. F “Well, what the devil do you want?” bellowed Capt. Mumm. “Are you not man enough to carry on for an hour 50 that I can get a little rest?” _Yar Lal made an_obeisance. o (Continued In Tomorrow's Star.) “Who says “T' D'you You shoulders. There Peter. choice; and, if I remember correctly, | pair of duck trousers that clung wetly to a pair of stinny legs; & ‘hin shirs, equally as wet and torn In a dozen| The new Transpersian Rallway will plnccs,ycuvcn:d the upper portion of his l be 408 miles - long. O AR R ! 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